


This Thing Between Us

by monchy



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:14:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monchy/pseuds/monchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kris thinks a road trip will solve all his problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Thing Between Us

There is nothing but desert around them, sandy and boring, almost claustrophobic in its immensity. The sky is clear, though, and the road empty before them. It smells dry, of the heat outside and inside the car, but Kris is almost thankful for the beads of sweat clinging to his body. He was never one for cold, so he enjoys the stuffiness inside the car, the way every breath feels like too much effort. It makes him feel lazy and tired, but it also puts him in this almost dream-like place where everything moves in slow motion.  
  
Next to him, Adam drives. He’s still wearing his leather jacket, stubborn in his obsession of covering himself up, as if half the world wasn’t begging to see him naked. Kris knows Adam hates it: the freckles and the paleness, every bit of fat that may cling to his body for too long a time. He doesn’t know that it makes him human, reachable, more beautiful. Kris reaches out, touches the pads of his fingers to Adam’s neck, finding one of the few gaps that allow him to see skin.  
  
Adam gasps.  
  
“You surprised me,” he intones, blue eyes still fixed on the road, as if trying to pierce it.  
  
“You feel warm,” Kris states. Adam is sweating too, must be cooking inside his thousand layers.  
  
Adam doesn’t answer, and Kris brings his hand back to rest on his own lap. The car is much too silent, only the radio playing the occasional summer hit filling its inside. They aren’t talking much, and Kris doesn’t know whose fault it is. It had seemed like a good idea: both of them, a car, a bit of anonymous life before going back to the craziness of their real one. Kris’s hands are already itching to play a tune on his guitar, but for a few days, it had been good to not be recognized, to stay in cheap motels, to see Adam with mussed hair like he hadn’t seen him in years. It hasn’t been all that good. Things are strained, tense. Kris can feel something lingering in the air between them.  
  
The low _rum-rum_ of the car is almost hypnotizing, and Kris closes his eyes, lets himself rest for a while. Despite everything, they did need to slow down for a while. He’s dozing off when he hears it, a loud bang that echoes through the desert, and that is followed by the sudden stop of the car.  
  
“Huh? What happened?” he asks, sitting up on the passenger seat and searching Adam’s eyes.  
  
Adam just shrugs, and once Kris has finished rubbing sleep away from his eyes, he catches his figure stepping out of the car, snakeskin boots crunching against the gravel on the ground. Kris steps out of the car, too, and smells hot, dry air.  
  
“Fuck, it’s hot.”  
  
Kris looks behind him, more surprised by the rare swear word than by Adam’s statement. Adam gets rid of a jacket and a shirt, and Kris has to bite his lip when he spies a patch of pale skin in between his jeans and the only t-shirt left on him. He looks down, and kicks at the ground in his best impression of an embarrassed toddler.  
  
“Well?”  
  
Kris looks up again, stares at Adam. “Well…” he repeats, unsure.  
  
“You don’t expect me to know anything about cars, do you, Krissy? Or to do anything that will undoubtedly screw with my fabulous nails, right?”  
  
Kris laughs, delighted. And then Adam smiles, and it feels genuine for the first time in the week they have spent together. Kris can’t stop beaming, even as the smell of gas fills his nostrils once he opens the hood of the car and sticks his head beneath it. There are cables, and a motor, and a lot of other stuff under there, too.  
  
“Adam, can I tell you a secret?”  
  
Adam blinks at him, intense and focused, and Kris thinks that Adam is expecting something a lot more life changing than what he’s about to say.  
  
“I know nothin’ about cars.”  
  
Adam rolls his eyes. “Oh, great. What nice boy from Arkansas doesn’t know how to fix a car?”  
  
Kris shrugs, watching as Adam rescues his cell-phone from inside the car with a pout in his pretty lips.  
  
“I’ll just call a tow-truck, then.”  
  
Kris nods and closes the hood of the car, coughing a little at the still lingering smell of gasoline in the air. He touches his own sweaty neck, and plunks down on top of the hood, his ass resting softly against it. Adam is talking on the phone, gesturing wildly and pacing non-stop even as he pulls his t-shirt down, almost as if afraid of showing more skin than he intends to. Kris can’t stop staring.  
  
The thing about Adam, is that it should be ridiculous. All of it: the singing, the hip-thrusting, the nearly humping mic-stands and licking his band mates, the calling him at three in the morning because _‘I just found the most incredible sparkly codpiece, Kris’,_ the sultriness and the glitter and the rhinestones. But it’s not, Jesus, it’s not. It’s wonderful, and all that Adam is, inside and out. The only word that comes to Kris’s mind when he tries to describe it is beautiful.  
  
“Well, it’ll take a while,” Adam announces finally, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the side of the car. His pout is still firmly in place, and his eyes seem to lose themselves in the miles and miles of sand before him.  
  
Silence settles between them, and it’s uncomfortable, strained. They used to have comfortable silences, but it’s almost as if Adam knows that something is happening between them, changing every minute they spend together. Truth be told, Kris had expected Adam to ask eventually, nothing but a simple _why did you decide to drag me into this crazy road trip thing when you know I like fancy restaurants and glittery bars? Why not Cale? What the hell is this Kris?_ But Adam is so darned respectful of his privacy and secrets.  
  
Kris breathes in, looks forward and away from Adam’s profile.  
  
“I’m getting a divorce,” he blurts out, sudden and unexpected. He feels like covering his own mouth with his hands, as if that could stop those words from escaping it, from being out there in the open.  
  
Adam turns towards him almost immediately, surprise written in his eyes for just a second. Soon, the blue eyes seem to turn sharp as they focus on Kris. Kris tries to look down, but finds himself unable to do so, as if trapped by the sudden predatory gleam in Adam’s face. He knew it was coming, he knew the minute he let those words out something was going to happen to solve this thing that they have been dancing around for so long. And God, he loves Katy, and it hurt to make the decision of the divorce, but now all he feels is anticipation. Fear, too.  
  
Adam crowds him against the hood of the car, his frame bigger than Kris’s, but also his presence, his very being always a little too big for this world. Kris feels his legs part around Adam’s thigh, and he fancies that he could listen to the fabric of their jeans sliding together if only he strained his hearing a little. Between the heat and Adam, he feels ready to pass out.  
  
“How long?” Adam asks, and Jesus, but he’s close, so close Kris can breathe him in, study the small shift of color in his eyes.  
  
Kris swallows, watches how Adam follows the movement.  
  
“Couple months ago,” he mumbles. “We’ve been talking to lawyers, but we haven’t–”  
  
“I don’t need the details, Kristopher.”  
  
Kris nods, feels his eyelids half close when Adam’s hand touches his jaw, his black-nailed thumb resting close to his mouth. He breathes in through his nose, but parts his lips to let the air out through his suddenly dry mouth. Adam’s just looking, following his eyes and watching the small changes in Kris’s breathing and probably the color in his cheeks.  
  
When Adam presses his lips against Kris’s, Kris can’t quite believe it. It takes him just a moment to catch on, to press back against Adam’s mouth and the rest of his body, that’s holding him tight against the hood of the car. Adam breathes out, hard, and touches the tip of his tongue to Kris’s lips, parting them as if coaxing them for permission. Kris lets him in with an intensity he didn’t know he possessed, and clutches at Adam’s lower back, digging his fingers in the sweaty skin, right under his shirt.  
  
Adam holds his head, his big hands expanding between Kris’s jaw, cheek and neck, and guiding him closer towards his mouth. Kris doesn’t know if this is how _fitting perfectly together_ feels, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t need rainbows of color or sparkles to know that he needs to kiss Adam every single day from now on. No third parties or guilty feelings, no _too busy to meet, sorry,_ and most certainly no more fear.  
  
They part at times, diving back in between ragged breaths and half lidded eyes. It’s still too hot, and their hands slide easily on sweaty skin, trying to find the gaps in their clothing that will allow them just a bit more touch. It’s almost too much, but the awkwardness of the past few days has been replaced by this idea of a bright future, and Kris can’t bring himself to stop.  
  
“This feels like the beginning of a bad porno,” says Adam, his nose nuzzling at Kris’s cheeks, his hips swaying just enough for Kris too feel him hard against his hip. “You think that the tow-truck guy will be hot?”  
  
Kris laughs, throwing his head back, and gasping when that only seems to give Adam an excuse to latch onto his neck.  
  
“Asshole,” Kris accuses soft against Adam’s ear. “We’re not having sex here, just so you know.”  
  
“Oh, I know.” Adam lifts his head up, cups Kris’s cheeks in his palms and kisses him yet again, full lips conveying the message of _too important_. “Maybe some other time.”  
  
The tow-truck takes another hour to get there, in which Adam and Kris change the hood of the car for the backseat. Adam has to pull Kris off his lap because _Kris, you’re killing me here,_ and they end up sharing lazy kisses under the receding sun of the desert. Kris is grateful for the laziness, the slow motion of everything, Adam’s discarded jacket and shirt, the whole feeling that fills the car now.  
  
The tow-truck guy drives them to the closest town, and while he does so, Kris stares at Adam, his profile and his ridiculous make-up that isn’t ridiculous at all, and even at the jacket that he has stubbornly put on yet again. He finds himself breathing a lot easier than he has in months, and when he grasps Adam’s hand, he gets a smile as a reward.

  
There are hard times to come ahead of them, once their little break is over, but for now they have the empty road and the shared secrets on the hood of a car.


End file.
